Word: lutz
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Lutz's first requests when he arrived at General Motors late last August was a new car. Not for himself; he already owns 17, including collectors' dreams like a 1934 LaSalle and a 1952 Aston Martin. No, GM's new vice chairman for product development was demanding a sexy "concept car" in just four months--in time for this week's annual Detroit Auto Show. Urged on by the man who recruited him, GM CEO Richard Wagoner, Lutz wanted to show industry leaders and critics that the world's largest automaker is moving to get its mojo back after years...
...record time. A flood of sketches and round-the-clock construction yielded the Pontiac Solstice, a two-door, gunmetal gray roadster with a supercharged engine and a Corvette transmission, which was to make its debut at the Detroit show on Sunday. The car is exactly what Lutz had in mind--simple, sultry, evocative--and although it is for now the only one of its kind, its off-the-shelf components suggest that if the critics like it, it could make it into production in a few years and sell for a little over...
That's the big question: whether Lutz can push GM to produce not just one concept car that may or may not ever hit the streets but lots of beautiful, must-have cars. Despite a booming truck business and recent gains in market share against its troubled crosstown rivals Ford and Chrysler, GM still lumbers under the burdens borne by all the Big Three: in a stagnant economy, overcapacity and intractable labor costs have obliterated profit margins. Meanwhile, the soaring value of the dollar against the yen is giving Detroit's Japanese competitors an even bigger advantage than they already...
...Design-blind corp. hires Bob Lutz, Chrysler vision guy (Viper, PT Cruiser) to up cool quotient...
...itchy eyes. But don't expect the carriers to instigate change. "If airlines increased cabin humidity beyond the customary level, condensation inside the aircraft's interior walls would trickle downward after landing and eventually enter the plane's sensitive electronics system," says Luft-hansa's chief medical officer Lutz Bergau. "As a passenger, would you want that to happen?" As for space, the industry acknowledges it is possible to give economy-class passengers more room, but only for higher ticket prices...